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Information for Authors - Petroleum Geoscience

Scope of the journal

Petroleum Geoscience transcends disciplinary boundaries and publishes a balanced mix of articles covering exploration, exploitation, appraisal, development and enhancement of sub-surface hydrocarbon resources and carbon repositories. The integration of disciplines in an applied context, whether for fluid production, carbon storage or related geoenergy applications, is a particular strength of the journal. Articles on enhancing exploration efficiency, lowering technological and environmental risk, and improving hydrocarbon recovery communicate the latest developments in sub-surface geoscience to a wide readership.

This journal publishes research articles, review articles and thematic sets.

Key points to consider before you submit

Preparing your paper

Guidelines for preparing text and illustrations can be found in the box to the right of this page. Those apply to all GSL publications. Detail of page size, colour and OA costs, which are specific to this journal are below.

Language

We welcome papers from authors in all countries, but if you are not fluent in English please seek assistance before submission.

We expect all authors, reviewers and editors to comply with the Society’s Code of Publishing Ethics. Please ensure that you have read, understood and complied with this, particularly the sections on authors and sample collection. You will be asked to confirm this when you submit your paper.

The Society now runs automatic plagiarism checks on submissions to all journals and those books using online submission. The checks will occur upon submission of a new manuscript.

Submission or publication elsewhere is not acceptable while your paper is under consideration for Petroleum Geoscience. Dual submission and publication are serious breaches of widely accepted publishing ethics.

The Society is now gathering information on the role of each author on submitted papers. We are using the CRediT taxonomy developed by CASRAI: http://casrai.org/credit. This information is for internal use and is not currently published.

The Society’s policy on corrections and retractions can be found in the CrossMark Policy.

As part of the submission process, you (or your employer) will be asked to grant the Society an exclusive licence to publish and accept the terms and conditions for use of your final PDF. If the manuscript is not accepted by the Geological Society of London or withdrawn prior to acceptance by the Geological Society of London, this agreement will be null and void.

You can reuse your figures and data without permission

You can post your original version at any time

You can post the refereed manuscript version 12 months after publication

You can pay to make your paper Open Access (see below)

You cannot post the final PDF or proofs at any time unless you have paid for Open Access

If you have not already done so, we encourage you to register for an ORCID iD. You can use your iD to log into our submission system. More information can be found on Orcid.org.

Coverage

The journal aims to publish a balanced mix of articles from those geoscience disciplines involved in the exploration, appraisal and development of hydrocarbon resources. Articles concerning exploration geology and geophysics, geochemistry and petrophysics, reservoir geology and reservoir engineering are welcomed.

Please have the text file as a separate file. You may put all other files in one folder. You can upload a ZIP file to the system and it will be automatically unpacked.

Note that there is a file-size limit of 5 MB to keep the merged PDFs manageable for editing and review. If your files are bigger, please make smaller versions for review and we will request the high-resolution files off-system when your paper is accepted.

The submission package will guide you through the processes for submitting your files and confirmation/approval.

Authors are encouraged to restrict their papers to a maximum of 12 journal pages, including figures, tables and references.

Papers should be arranged as follows:

Title: brief and specific; followed by name(s) and address(es) of authors (including email address of corresponding author)

Abstract: this must be intelligible without reference to the paper, and should not exceed 200 words. Figures are not allowed in the Abstract

Main body of paper: subdivided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd order headings; omit heading 'Introduction'

References: in full; authors' names must be keyed as capitals and lower case

Tables

Figure captions

Figures (5 MB maximum) in separate files

Please be prepared to upload a single text file (.doc or .doc compatible) containing your manuscript. You can upload a ZIP file with your table, figures and supplementary data and the system will automatically unpack it.

Page format

In the final typeset version the main text is in double column format. Final printed page size: 296 mm deep by 210 mm wide. Maximum final size of illustrations: 240 mm deep by 178 mm wide. Single column width: 85 mm. Number of words per page: 900.
Titles, authors and affiliations: for a short title and one author, allow 100 words; for a longer title and/or several authors and affiliations, allow up to 300 words.

Figure captions: straightforward word count unless it is a 1½ column figure, in which case don't include caption in count.

Tables: across one column (max total 65 characters width including three character space between each column) – estimate ¼ or ½ page depending on length of table; across two columns – estimate ½ or 1 page depending on the length of the table. Landscape tables = whole page.

Colour charges

From 2018 there will be no charges for colour figures in this journal.

Open Access publishing

Authors may choose to make their article fully Open Access (sometimes called ‘Gold Open Access’) on payment of an Article Processing Charge. For Petroleum Geoscience the APC is £1600/$3200. Articles where the first author or at least half the authors are Fellows of the Geological Society or Members of the European Association of Petroleum Geoscientists & Engineers are entitled to a £250 discount. There is a 50% discount for articles where all the authors are at a research institution in a developing country.

You can select Open Access when you submit your article online. You do not need to pay until after your article is accepted. There will be a link to the payment authorization form in the acceptance letter.

If you require Open Access but cannot pay the APC, the Geological Society also supports ‘Green Open Access’, where you can post your final post-refereed version of the article to a website or repository 12 months after the online publication date.

Authors must not post a typeset proof or final version to any website or repository unless the article is fully Open Access.

Refereeing and editing

A member of the editorial board will send your paper to at least two referees. They will handle the papers through the reviewing and scientific editing procedure and approve the finalized script for publication. A Single Blind Peer Review process is used.

We expect the reviewing and editing procedure to take about three to five months in the case of a paper requiring little revision. We are of course dependent on the goodwill of unpaid reviewers to achieve these targets.

You can keep track of this process through the online submissions package.

Production

Accepted manuscripts: The Journal will make the accepted manuscript available online within 2 weeks of acceptance. This is conditional on receipt of a completed assignment of licence agreement and confirmation that the author has permission to include any third-party content, where applicable. The accepted manuscript will be a water-marked PDF of the accepted text and original figures. Any supplementary content will be made available via a link on the PDF cover page.

If there is an editorial reason why a manuscript should not be posted prior to publication of the corrected proof (e.g. because of a press release or media embargo) then the author should contact the journal Production Editor (this must be done before the article is accepted as the process will be automatic). You will be alerted to this by a question during the submission process.

Published article (version of record): The Production Editor will write to the corresponding author notifying them of when the version of record is due to be published. The paper will be copyedited and then sent to an external typesetter. The corresponding author will be emailed with details of how to access their proof. We do not generally send revised proofs to the author.

The production process takes 6–8 weeks from acceptance to publication.

Offprints

You will be emailed instructions on how to download a PDF of your paper from the online version of the journal. Paper offprints can be ordered; instructions will be sent with the proof email.

Norman Falcon Award

The EAGE’s Norman Falcon Award is presented to the author(s) of the best paper published in Petroleum Geoscience (or in First Break in a related topic) in the calendar year preceding the award. The paper should be of high scientific standard and should represent a significant contribution to one or more sub-surface disciplines.

Keeping in touch

GSL produces a regular author email newsletter (about 6 times each year). If you would like to receive this, please contact our marketing department (marketing@geolsoc.org.uk). You do not have to be a published author to sign up. You can unsubscribe at any time.